A Princess for Christmas
Christmas time has come to end, but the memories will still be with us for another long while, helping us survive until next December.
Christmas is the time of family reunions, happy celebrations, good food and lots of red-ribbon-wrapped presents. But mostly, it is a free time, when we can finally get some rest, relax with a good book or watch a film. It’s the time when we go through our long lists of things we want to read and watch, and doing that, we come across pieces of pop-cultural art, these little, unpolished diamonds.
I am not usually a romantic person. Alright, maybe a bit, but I’ll have you know, Danielle Steel and this kind of literature is definitely not my type. I’m much more into Coben and any dark, action-packed thrillers. (Or at least I was, after Christmas, who knows what this new year will bring.) And then the snow has fallen, on December 21st, and somehow I found myself reading and watching all these Christmasy stuff.
I’m not talking about Home alone here. Of course that has to be a part of Christmas celebration too, but not the main one. I’m talking about not-so-classic, new or forgotten treasures. So, I could write about this book, which was this not-exactly-Danielle-Steel, but warm, fluffy, Christmasy stuff, I would never ever suspect I would read, but I did, and enjoyed it. It was entitled Let it snow, this John Green and Laureen Myracle and Maureen Johnson one? You know it, right? You do, and that’s exactly why I couldn’t write about it.
But there’s also one film, which was very fluffy, Christmasy cliche and enjoyable, and which I bet most of you didn’t see, because you were too focused on Home alone: Lost in New York. Sorry, Kevin, but there’s more to Christmas popculture than McCallisters.
Once upon a time…
A Princess for Christmas is everything you would expect of the Christmas fairytale. It has a poor, lonely girl from a little town in the US who comes to Europe, to a huge castle that belongs to a posh, old man who appears to be family, there are maids with porcelain smiles and white aprons, tall butlers in suits, there isn’t a Christmas tree (not at first at least), and of course this handsome guy she runs into on the corridor – yeah, he appears to be a prince.
It does start with ‘Once upon a time…’, it truly does . And yet, as tawdry as it sounds, there’s something to it, that at Christmas time, makes its charm irresistible. Because what more do we need on a snowy Christmas evening but a family rom-com with a touch of magic, and a mug of hot chocolate.
The thing about A Princess for Christmas is that it is a school book example of a classic. The movie has its own touch of originality, like each and every fairytale does. To begin with – the main heroine is a watchmaker and an art geek, and there is runing gag that is her obsession with guessing the brand of the antiques around the castle. But still, with all the odds of the 21st century, A Princess for Christmas fits Cambell’s archetypes and plot schemes perfectly. It has all the basic elements of a fairytale, with a castle, a prince and a ball dress.
It has a beautiful soundtrack based on Tchaikovsky, Mozart and Chopin, with a touch of hard rock and a little pop. It has a beautiful location, brilliant acting, beautiful Katie McGrath and a handsome Sam Heughan (and forever the best Sir Roger Moore). It is a 2011 fairytale, that for a while lets us forget about the world and believe that fables still happen, and may happen to each and every of us, even in this grey, modern world. After all, at a colourful time of Christmas, nothing is impossible. And it is not like we haven’t witnessed royal miracles similar to the one in the movie already…
So, what popcultural treasures did you find this Christamas? Let us know in the comment below!
LUBIĘ… ekologiczne płatki kokosowe.
WKURZA MNIE… zła interpunkcja w opublikowanym tekście.
MARZĘ O… zobaczeniu Hamleta w Barbicanie.